India lost its decisive battle against corruption

India lost its decisive battle against corruption. Team Anna’s political aspirations and hidden greed for political power, to be blamed for their indescribable retreat. Why did they talk so loud if they did not had the courage and capability to take the fight to its logical conclusion, people questions? Today millions of people in India who pinned their hopes upon Anna and his team to end the institutionalised corruption in all the wings of the Governance in the country. They are dismayed and embittered by the sudden impeachable u-turn of team Anna. The other day members of the team Anna roar ed that the Government will have to lift their carcass from the Jantar-Mantar in the absence of the strong Jan Lokpal Bill. Where are those loud claims today? Where is the strong Jan Lokpal Bill. Countrymen who envisioned, that the battle against corruption has reached in its decisive phase, intriguingly the rhythm of the movement suddenly lost its tune when it has almost reached its crescendo. Ironically the hysterical talks of team Anna stand doused like a milk boil. What abruptly went wrong, it’s any body’s guess? Weather the appeal by certain prominent individual to end the fast was manipulated and orchestrated by team Anna if so than the incredible decline of team Anna would be unfathomable in times to come. Such a colossal betrayal of the cause deserves severest punishment. It is far better and honourable to lose the battle than to win by cheating the countrymen.
Surely team Anna has lost the sense of respectability and confidence just in few moments which they earned with the hard work of couple of years. Movements such as ‘India Against corruption’ led by Sh. Anna Hazare progresses in years and ultimately become result oriented. Expecting mountainous result through shot cuts embedded with short sighted coquettish approach, always prove disastrous. You certainly had no business to arouse the sentiments of the people to such a pass, if you were to run away leaving people in the lurch. The JP (Jay Parkash Narayan) movement way back in 1975 against the promulgation of emergency in India, Government kept the entire leadership in jails for more than nineteen months. The entire leadership against the emergency, who were in jails, had never shown any sign of resilience during the period they were suffering in jails, till they achieved the end result i.e. the complete revocation of emergency, restoration of the fundamental rights of the Indian citizens and freedom of the press, despite the fact that some top leaders were kept in solitary confinement for the entire phase of emergency. Sacrifices are the prime and fundamental requisite for the success of the people’s movement at a large canvass. You just can’t become martyr by showing a strain of blood on a little finger of your’s. All most all the members of the team Anna lost their mental cool and composure , reasonableness and wisdom in the past one week, besides becoming abusive, literally calling names and painting everybody with the same brush, including the media. Such movements succeed with long drawn planned strategies. Once the leadership of any movement, begins exhorting people for violence the focus of attention of the masses withers away with in no time and the movements too fizzle out expeditiously. The faux pas occurred when everybody in team Anna began to play as engine with no one willing to join as bogie , why blame people for the thin crowed this time, who would like to board a train which has no schedule for departure and arrival to the destination , hence the complete collapse of the show.
Members of team Anna who appeared on the visual media for debates tried to brow beat and belittle everybody, in a manner as if all other prominent people on the panel were just a trash for them and whosoever questioned the objectivity of their movement they insulted them with such a disdain that even the viewers felt embarrassed sometime.
So much so they did not even spare the exalted office of Presidency calling the President of India Sh. Purnab Mukerjee a most corrupt knowing it fully well that President of India enjoys impunity under the Constitution. They even targeted the people of exalted eminence who are respected all over for their outstanding modesty. Degree of unreasonableness surpassed all canons while they demanded the setting up of SIT (Special Investigation Team) against the 14 sitting Ministers of the Union council of Ministers. Which Government worth the name and the spine would yield to this kind of demand and yet yearn to stay in office? Such self defeating propositions propelled by team Anna has brought the decline of the most cherished movement of the Indian people, sooner than later i.e. ‘India against Corruption’.
Now the agog reports in the media suggest that Mr. Anna Hazare and his team have decided to exercise political options. They might form a new political outfit and prepare for 2014 elections to the Parliament (Lok Sabha). They would be soon seeking votes to become the members of the same august ‘House’ who’s glory, righteousness and competence have been under their sharp attack. They would soon assume the status and role of parliamentarians if voted to success which they have been denigrating and denouncing, completely oblivious of the fact that one day they would be treading the same path.
Good that finally Anna Hazare and his team realised that the Parliamentary democracy is the best form of Government and any change they had rightly perceived for better India could be brought through political consensus and democratic means, filtered through the Constitutional mechanism under the control and regulations of the Indian Parliament. Good luck to team Anna for the new endeavour and their voyage to the most difficult terrains to comprehend the vexed conditions terribly engulfing our country. Some of them may become members of Parliament in 2014 but Indian people had certainly lost their decisive battle against corruption, thus opening the flood gates for the break of the civil war in India, sooner or later to break the shackles of the corporate slavery. India’s Noble Laureate Rabindranath Tagore wrote to Mahatama Gandhi way back in 1919, “The great gift of freedom can never come to people through charity. We must win it before we can own it. And India's opportunity for winning it will come to her when she can prove she is morally superior to the people who rule her by their right of conquest.”
Bir Devinder Singh
Former Deputy Speaker, Punjab
e-mail: birdevinders@gmail.com